Pale Glass
by Cerulean.Phoenix7
Summary: They say the message is in the medium, but when the medium becomes volatile...that's another matter entirely.
1. The Pledge

Pale Glass

A/N: This is definite AU for Fringe and probably a slight canon for Inception.

Disclaimer: I do not own Inception or Fringe, if I did I would be one lucky person.

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><p><span>Chapter One: The Pledge<span>

The sun shattered the sidewalk as Olivia took her cup of coffee from the vender under November's frigid guise. She nodded to him gratefully and strolled away, reaching for her sunglasses.

She sighed when they fell on the pavement with a clatter. As she stooped down to pick them up she saw an abandoned coffee cup nearby.

It annoyed her to the extent that she wished it weren't there at all and she tried to push the thought away with the image of white tulips that appeared monthly on the kitchen table when she was a child.

It was when her fingers were inches from her black sunglasses that she saw it; a perfect white tulip growing out of a crevasse in the sidewalk.

And the coffee cup was gone.

She was drawn back to her sunglasses when a sharp _crunch_ snapped through the air. She looked down and saw her sunglasses, crushed beneath the foot of a-in her opinion- rather ignorant person.

Her shoulders curved into taut bows of frustration as her eyes trailed up the person's form until she saw the face, a man. He had a crisp dark suit on with a blue tie.

It would have been worse if it was yellow.

She noticed that he had blue eyes, and something along the lines of irony and frustration made her annoyed by the similarity.

It reminded her of Peter, but he was far from what she would associate with his character.

Peter at least _watched_ where he was going.

The man made no attempt at apology; unless one called a blank stare some unorthodox form of remorse.

But she was severely doubtful of that.

She left her mangled glasses on the ground and continued walking as the sun glared in her eyes.

As she rounded a corner she wished that she had another pair of sunglasses, but something else caught her attention as she passed the corner of a glass building that rose like a glossy sycamore.

She cursed and dropped her steaming cup of coffee when she saw it, blandly obvious and startling against the sunny sky, a cancer of impossibility that spread through the air.

She had simply wished that the sun wasn't so bright in her eyes and as if on a cue from a magician's wand and a sparkle of some mystic dust a building shifted. It morphed and twisted up into the air as its shadow crawled over her skin and the sun was swallowed by its massive form.

It took her all of thirty seconds to realise that she was the only one to notice this particular ambiguity. The people around her carried on without the slightest hint of surprise or suspicion, their coffee cups still perched in their calm hands.

Her hands had fallen to her sides, tense and frightened. Her eyes jumped over the building as she searched for some explanation, some sign of this strange occurrence.

She lived under the presumption that there was a logical explanation behind any event, and she was determined to flush out the logic behind this.

She had always had her sunglasses before and with them she never noticed the sun, but all she had seen in her line of vision were thousands of sharp golden needles that prodded into her retinas and that prompted her desire for some shade.

The building just _sprouted_ in the same manner as the magical beanstalk that she had read about as a child, but she had always had some preconceived notion that there was a fine line between fantasy and reality.

It was as if some massive tide had just swept in, careening over those fine lines in the sands of her life until they were gone.

And at that exact moment she had nothing to carve out those lines again.

She could only marvel at the madness.

In her bewilderment, she wondered for an instant how it could truly be possible, but then her line of work dealt with things that bordered on the brink of impossible.

The notion didn't comfort her in any sense.

She realised that she probably looked rather strange standing on the sidewalk staring at a building that to everyone else exhibited no signs of suspicion and decided to carry on, leaving her cup of spilled coffee in its mocha splatter on the ground.

It was when she had bumped against the shoulders of at least a dozen people in a matter of minutes that she felt like the space on the sidewalk had gotten smaller.

She had never known herself to be claustrophobic, but in cases where it appeared that one was being boxed in by other people it was difficult not to cultivate the slightest degree of concern.

She continued down the street, but convenience had defected from her list of allies as people continued to close in around her. It was like trying to navigate between the slimy scales of sardines.

At an intersection where traffic and tail lights bled a cherry red she attempted to cross.

It was all going fine until someone grabbed her arm.

And then ten others joined in the scuffle.

She flailed, kicked and tried to scream but something dry and thick was stuffed into her mouth as a kick rammed into her stomach and a fist jutted into her shoulder.

It was as if she were at the mercy of a dozen infuriated hammers and as each one smashed aggressively into her body she tried to imagine the white tulips.

None appeared.

Every muscle that she was still aware of throbbed sharply as hot nails of pain dug through her skin. Her head pounded like a drum; she only wished that it would _stop._

Her hands had come up to cover her face when she felt the fists stop trying to crush her battered fingers.

With a large reserve of caution she peeked out between her bloody fingers and saw a man holding out his hand to her beneath the sunlight. The people on the street were frozen in a strange tableau; it was a curious concoction of chaos and calm that she had never seen before.

It wasn't until after he helped her up that she noticed his eyes were blue, along with his suit and tie.

It was the man whose shoe had crushed her glasses.

She said nothing to him, so after he gave her a stern glance he sighed gently and said to her:

"This is what happens," he said as he motioned to the still forms surrounding them on the street, "When you try and control the dream; the dream fights back."

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><p><strong>Please review, the more reviews that I get the sooner that I will post part two :)<strong>


	2. The Turn

Here is chapter two. I would like to thank liliesandroses54 for the sole review on the first chapter.

Here's the deal for part three, I would like at least 4 reviews on either chapter posted so far. 4 more reviews = part three :)

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><p><span>Chapter Two: The Turn<span>

It was the only moment that Olivia could recall where she held a disdain for coffee as they sat at a tiny table outside a quaint café on a bustling city street. She wiped her sore fingers with a cloth as she tried to remove the blood.

She was thankful that it wasn't due to reasons that one could discern from little red marks on a paper cup; lacerations of a guilty hand.

The reasons to her appeared to be insidious and witty, something that she did not appreciate.

He _knew_ how she liked her coffee; he'd even announced it when the waitress brought over their order:

"Black coffee, with one sugar," he said with just a dash of bravado.

It was a dash too much.

Ribbons of steam billowed out from her untouched cup of coffee on the table as she watched him, an obnoxious fly scrambling in the ointment.

She would wait a little longer; she wanted to see how long he would scramble before he begged for help.

But of course there was no such thing as a perfect reality; its only constant was imperfection.

"You know your coffee is getting cold," he mentioned in a distracted tone.

_Let it get cold then_, she thought. If this man was as audacious as he was inconsiderate then she was eager to discover what little trove of contingencies he had up his sleeve.

"You know I don't think that you ever told me your name," she said.

"I haven't had a reason to," he answered as he sipped his coffee.

"Well I just asked you your name so I'd say that's enough of a reason."

He set his coffee cup back on the table, the delicate china clinking slightly as he set back on the saucer. It reminded her of silver wind chimes.

He leaned forward on the table and folded his hands; she felt as if she were on the wrong end of Sherlock Holmes' interrogation table.

"Is it really?" He asked in a deadpan voice.

She didn't answer.

"Is simply asking ever enough, or does there need to be some... _desperation_ in the question?

He leaned back in his chair and crossed his legs as his hands settled on his lap: "What do you think Olivia, are you _desperate_ to know my name?"

The wicker woven chair beneath her was the only thing that kept her grasp of reality from tumbling away into a pit of molten fear at that moment.

She had never told him her name, so how could he possibly know it?

Dozens of scenarios screamed through her mind like a whirring pinwheel; each coming faster and faster until she couldn't discern one from the other twenty.

Uncertainty held her in its thick jaws; caught in limbo between life and death.

She had never thought such a terrifying moment was even conceivable.

"How do you know my name?" She asked.

"Because," he answered, "It's my job to know you Olivia."

The fly was still in the ointment, but now it swam through it unhindered; and to Olivia that was far more disconcerting. But after she had sat for moments in disbelief and throbbing fear she refused to let her question go unanswered; if there was one thing that she had never been it was passive.

She placed her hands, palms flat like smooth coins and looked him right in the eyes as she spoke:

"Listen to me I don't care how you know me or what the hell you want with me, you know my name so at the very least you could have the courtesy to tell me yours."

He moved his pointer finger from beneath his chin to graze his upper lip in a lazy motion before he nodded.

"You really are _desperate_ to know my name aren't you?"

She didn't answer; she would never capitulate to admission.

"My name is Dom Cobb," he answered.

With that matter sorted she refused to beat around the bush any longer, even if there was a tiger lurking amongst the emerald shrubbery she wanted to know _what_ was there.

"Why am I here?"

It was of course, a rather general question. But he was there for a specific reason, which suggested that she was too. (Except that only one of them knew _why_).

His eyes darted straight to hers and didn't move, she thought that she saw a glint of epiphany in his cerulean eyes. His finger had stopped the motions against his upper lip. He dropped his hand from his face before he spoke again:

"That depends on your definition of _here_," he answered.

She slid her palms back off the table as her shoulders met the rough wicker of the chair. Her throat bristled and her skin rose in goose bumps. She didn't have a chance to add any words before he continued:

"Right now you are sitting at a table outside a café, drinking a cup of coffee with one sugar," he paused momentarily, "And you are in a sensory deprivation tank under the watch of Peter and Walter Bishop."

She quirked a suspicious eyebrow.

"But I haven't been back in the tank in months, why would I go back in?"

"Back in?" he asked, almost surprised, "You never left."

Her mouth crumbled into a frown.

"You've been in the tank ever since you went in to talk to John Scott."

Her eyes bloomed open like emerald suns as the realisation crashed into her, moulding painfully into her body.

She'd never left the tank.

"So this," she gestured to the rippling facade of buildings and streets, "Isn't real?"

"No," he answered, "You've been living in a dream Olivia, a dream that you conjured up in that tank."

Her entire body felt heavy like lead, her heart thick and painful with molten shock. Her memories of the time since her visit to the tank paled like glass, so breakable and transparent.

They weren't real.

Her and Peter... wasn't real. It was all some goddamned illusion that had been spun from the coiled thread of her imagination, and there'd always been enough to suit her purposes.

She pressed her trembling fingers to her forehead as her blonde hair curtained around her; it was so overwhelming; so twisted and mangled like broken bones that she struggled to keep her composure.

When she looked back up at him, his eyes were fixed on her in a studious manner as if she were a lab rat and he was gauging her reactions.

Like Walternate.

She almost told him to knock it off, but then another thought occurred to her. If she had never left the tank, she had never been Over There.

She had never been a subject of Walternate's latent vendetta.

But that was under the assumption that she believed every ounce of what this Dom Cobb had said, and she wasn't one to assume.

"Why should I believe you?"

"So the sceptic in you finally comes out," he said with a smirk.

He frowned slightly before he spoke again.

"You should believe me Olivia because I was sent in here by Walter and Peter, and they want to bring you back. According to Peter, Walter's gone through quite the amount of red vines since your little escapade began."

There was something about the way he mentioned the minute details that only a few would know that opened her little vial of trust, something that she reserved for saints and heroes.

She nibbled at her lower lip slightly before she spoke: "So what happens now?"

He stood from the table and walked over to her side:

"What happens when the dream ends... you wake up."

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><p><strong>Please Review :)<strong>


	3. The Prestige

A/N: Alright, so much for waiting for those reviews :P I decided that I should probably get this chapter posted and not leave any readers without a resolution (and I really wanted to post this chapter)This is the final chapter, I would like to thank liliesandroses54 for following and reviewing this story. I would also like to thank ab89us for testing out this wild, winding staircase of a story before I posted it :)

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><p><span>Chapter Three: The Prestige<span>

He motioned swiftly with the bob of his head to another street that stretched away into the distance as he said:

"It's time for you to wake up, Olivia."

She left her coffee and followed him, trudging through the thick crowds as if they were an opaque cloud of smog that was nearly impossible to pass. The sun cast a sheen on the roadway, heat rippling in the air like wind caught in a damp sheet on a clothesline; pushing and pushing but it could go no further.

He led her into a warehouse off of the main street and shut the door behind him as he yanked a dangling string and with a sharp_ click_ a light burst into life over their heads. She was thankful that the warehouse was clean, almost bare save for a workbench, two cupboards and a small table in the middle of the room.

The only thing on the table was a deck of cards.

He walked over to the table and lightly plucked a card off the top of the deck, flimsy and thin like a feather. He picked up another one and placed them against each other, meeting so that they formed a triangle that jutted above the table. He took another two cards and repeated the process again. When there were two red-backed triangles sitting on the table he took one card from the deck and lightly placed it on top of the two triangular towers; she saw his fingers tremble slightly as he tried to find the perfect balance.

It was with more than a little hesitation that he cautiously set the card on top of the others. He picked up two more from the deck and formed another triangle.

It was when he was reaching for the eighth card that she interrupted him: "Is there some point to this?" she asked as he looked at her incredulously, "Or are you just trying to impress me with your card skills?"

He smiled for a moment before returning to his progressing house of cards.

"Haven't you ever heard the phrase 'patience is a virtue'?" he asked.

"No," she answered.

"Well you have now," he replied.

She didn't say anything further, just watched as the house took shape, each row of cards shrinking towards the apex of the structure. Her eyes zig-zagged along the sides of the triangles, following the route of gravity as it burrowed through the structure. It was only because the force was spread over the entire support system at the bottom that it did not collapse.

_Share the load_, as she recalled from a distant quote.

She'd never let herself share the load with anyone beyond herself.

When he'd finished there were ten levels to the house, the sides a bright crimson and the front peppered with windows like the face of a diamond.

It could very have been a window to a thousand other worlds, if she could only _see_ them.

He moved over to the window and flicked the locks open, but before he opened it she scoffed, "You're going to prove something to me by having wind knock down a house of cards?"

He looked over his shoulder slowly, his face stoic and unaffected by her comment.

"Not exactly."

And with that, he threw the window open.

A thick gust of wind rushed in and tossed Olivia's hair into her face, blinding her in a golden hurricane. She brushed her hair out of her face and looked back over to the table.

The house of cards was still there, untouched by the violent torrent of wind that just rushed in.

It shouldn't have proved anything to her, but she knew that card houses didn't stand against wind. They fell, it was a universal constant.

Her carpet of logic had just been yanked out from under her feet.

"How are they cards still standing?" she asked.

"Because they aren't real," he answered as he stepped around the table so that he was face to face with Olivia, "None of this is real, that wind that you just felt on your face wasn't real. You felt it because you _wanted_ it to be real."

She thought back to her time Over There and to what she went through to survive, her only wish then that it was all some grotesque nightmare.

"What about when I was on the other side?" she asked.

"A by-product of the dream," he answered, "You went over there to find Peter did you not?"

She nodded.

"And you _wanted_ to be with Peter, you wanted something _real_ with him. So you went Over There to get him back but... it didn't work out all too well."

"Clearly," she said through gritted teeth; her one arm itched slightly; she didn't have to look to know it was caused by the many needle marks on her skin.

"Why didn't the cards fall then?" she asked, "If I want this to be real then I know that the cards will fall, that's what happens."

"Ah but you see," he said, "When you're building a house of cards, you never _really_ want it to fall do you?"

She frowned slightly.

_No_, she thought.

"Olivia," Cobb said.

She turned to look at him and she saw something in his eyes, something a little more tender than compassion and darker than pity. "I'm asking you to go home, this isn't your home."

She thought about it for a moment, and what _home_ truly meant to her. Her home had been invaded there but not back in reality as she was told. In that reality she and Peter were nothing more than colleagues.

But then she remembered their conversation outside the café and when Cobb had said _is simply asking ever enough?_

Was his request an incentive tempting enough to make her leave?

"You said to me back at the café," she said, "Is asking ever enough or does it have to be desperate? Tell me Mr. Cobb, how desperate are you for me to return home?"

"Not as desperate as those who are watching over you now."

She shook her head, "But they aren't the ones here right now, they aren't the ones asking me."

"But I already did," he answered.

"You did," she responded.

She saw him sigh heavily, "You can't stay here Olivia."

"Why? You can't forcibly pull me out, if could you probably would have tried by now."

"Because you _know_ now that this isn't real, you just haven't accepted it. If you were to stay here you would have the ability to change things however you wanted, simply out of _desire_. That's no way to live."

"Then what is the way to live?" she asked, "For the past two years I've been through experiments, I've been held and tested on and nearly had my damn brain cut out and I'm trying to live with those memories."

"But those past two years aren't real," Cobb answered.

And then, she realised it. It unwrapped itself before her eyes like the many folds of paper over a package and she had just torn off the last scrap of paper.

If she went back, she would have a fresh start.

"If anything Olivia," Cobb said, "Go back for Peter, don't leave yourself in this dream and be lost to him forever."

She eyed him curiously; there was a glint of sharp regret in his eyes that bordered on the fringes of pain.

"Have you had something like that happened before?" she asked.

He chewed on his lip slightly and she watched the Adam's apple on his neck bob slightly before he answered, "Yes."

She felt her throat tense, it made sense why he had been so determined to get her out, he had a particular relationship with that kind of pain.

"I'm sorry," she said and after a pause she added "How do I...wake up?"

He motioned with the flick of two fingers "Follow me and I'll show you."

She let him lead her to the back of the warehouse, where a large steel door rose before them.

"Open it," he said.

She quirked an eyebrow at him, "That's it?"

"You want to wake up don't you?"

She nodded calmly.

"Then open the door," he said again.

She curled her hand over the handle, cold and hard like stone and turned it as the metal creaked on aged hinges that squealed like rats.

Light spilled over the barrier, bleeding into the room and blinding Olivia as she covered her eyes against the light.

But before she could even peek through the blindness she felt a large push behind her and she was falling, tumbling through a blinding nothingness that paralysed her with anxiety.

Then she saw it below her, water.

She splashed into the azure waves, spinning and whirling amongst bubbles and swirls as she kicked for the surface.

But there was none.

There was a disorientating moment where she felt as if she were absolutely weightless before she realised again that she was on water...and she was floating.

She opened her eyes, it was dark.

She thought that she was back on the other side.

"Please let me out of here," she said softly.

Her voice echoed through the space as she tried to feel for the walls and water sloshed around her.

"Get me out of here!" She said with more insistence.

A moment later there was more light and two strong arms hooked themselves under her shoulders and pulled her out of the darkness.

It was only the moment after she had settled on the cold floor of the lab that she noticed that she had been in the tank... and was now in the arms of Peter Bishop.

He looked at her as she looked around, disoriented and dazed.

"Olivia," he said and she looked at him, "Glad to have you back sweetheart."

"Peter," she said softly, still dazed over what had just transpired. She tentatively reached a hand over to his arm and gripped it, pulling him closer to her as she leaned against his chest.

"Hey," he whispered into her damp hair, "You're gonna be fine."

Olivia could only hope that he was right.

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><p>Later that evening, Olivia sipped her shot of whiskey and then swirled it in her glass as she gazed out the window.<p>

There had been no Dom Cobb sent by Peter and Walter to help her. When she explained it to Walter, he said that in all likelihood it was her mind beginning to revive itself.

It was also strange, being back in a time that existed to her as a distant memory. At least, in a dream it had been.

She started to move towards the door to the balcony of her apartment and then stopped. With a smirk she headed back into the kitchen and opened a drawer, pulling out a deck of cards. She built a small house of cards, only four rows (she wasn't quite as confident in her talent) and set the rest down on the table before she walked away with a smile.

She opened the door to the balcony, letting a small breeze glide in.

She didn't look back to see if the cards were still standing.

_End_

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><p><strong>So... what did everyone think?Thoughts? Leave a review (cookies for anyone who can guess the movie references that I put in here, this chapter in particular ;)<strong>

**Thanks for reading :)**


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